Help

[Kara]

How do you take one piece of a B&W photo and make only one part of it in color. I have a B&W photo of a baby boy, and I would like his hat to show up as Blue, while the rest stays B&W.
Jasc user
Thanks

[Stacey]

How do you take one piece of a B&W photo and make only one part of it in color. I have a B&W photo of a baby boy, and I would like his hat to show up as Blue, while the rest stays B&W.
Jasc user
Thanks

Kara, I use Paint Shop, but this will probably work in most programs. I make a duplicate color copy of the picture. I make one of the copies B&W and place that as a new layer over the color layer. Then I use my erase tool and erase the parts that I want to show as color. Then when I'm finished, I merge the layers into one. Hope this helps! :)

[Emma]

WARNING: Too much information below! Disregard anything you don't like!

There are SO many ways to do this. It depends on the look you want (actual color photo, hand tinted, etc), and if the original is b&w already or in color.
If the photo is in color, and you don't want a hand-tinted look, I love Stacey's previous suggestion. Or use magnetic lasso the hat with feather value 2 and select inverse, Edit>Desaturate (or desaturate in the Hue/Saturation box).

For hand-tinting
One of the easiest in PS is to use a brush tool with the color you want, and in the Options Bar at the top lower the opacity, and try changing the Blending Mode to something like Color or Color Dodge or Screen (try a bunch and see how they affect the brush).

Then carefully paint on the color. Change your brush size to be smaller on the edges by tapping the [ key. You can use the magnetic lasso to select the hat with a feather of 2 to "stay inside the lines."

If you're more experienced, use the magnetic lasso or Extract filter on a duplicate layer to select or extract the hat, then use Edit>Hue, Colorize, and slide the Hue slider to where you want it. Or not on a separate layer, you can just select the hat and use Hue on only that portion of the image.

Also see the Tutorial in the U section on using the Sponge tool (PS). It saturates or desaturates color. I don't know if you can desaturate the whole photo then just use the sponge tool to put back the blue, I don't think PS "remembers" what color was there...but give it a try. Might be tedious to use sponge tool to desaturate an entire background!

Or, Or, OR! Try lots of different things, each method will teach you more about the software and give varied results.

[Amanda]

There are quite a few quick classes on this very topic sharing many different techniques. What program do you use? If you know your program pretty well, you can usually translate other programs directions into your own if there aren't any for your program.

[Kara]

Thank you guys!

Amanda - I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro :D

[Emma]

Thank you guys!

Amanda - I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro :D
:o My essay was all in Photoshop...well, hopefully someone read it that can use it...

The basic ideas are the same in PSP, though. Hand-paint the color, lasso select to "color inside the lines," change Hue after making b&w, or also in either program can use the Flood Fill (paint bucket) tool with the same translucent option settings.

I read something once about some really cool techniques to do this, but kind of advanced, and I don't remember what it was. I think I saved the instructions, though, I'll have to go look!

Working with color is something that usually has a million different avenues to similar results, have fun and post a link here when you finisht the layout so we can see!